I bought the iPhone app today, just one day after buying the iPhone itself!

I just wanted to tell you that I love it so far. No, the results are not instantaneous, nor are they accurate to the hundredth of a percent mathematically ... but you don't claim that they are! The program calculates based on Monte Carlo sims, so you expect a slight variation. At least I do. It's good enough to give you what you want/need. For those that are so precise in their play that the extra 0.5% will make a difference to their strategy ... well, then they're much better players than me!

Also, to give another user's viewpoint to a couple of the issues raised thus far:

1) Complaints about the speed. Yes, it's a little slow. But, it's not THAT slow. You get your results back in 10-15 seconds, it seems. That's plenty fast enough for it to be practical. There was the complaint that it's useless for online play because it is so slow. I suppose that's true, but why would you use your iPhone for caclulations when you're playing online ON A COMPUTER that has access to other speedy computer-based tools? Are these people playing on Windows 3.1 and can't switch to another window?? LOL ... Personally, I play mostly live, and this app is absolutely wonderful for that scenario.

2) The "Deal to..." feature. I think it's just fine. I've not seen any other simulator/math program that includes this type of information. So, I give you kudos for that. It can be very useful information for an astute player. But, like any other type of information, it can be harmful if used incorrectly. So be it. Personally, I think the feature is great, especially the "draws" section.

Nice job overall. It can use some improvement (what can't?), but it's a very useful product right now, especially for us mostly-live players.

I have no complaints about the speed, and I think the deal to flop feature is extremely valuable and an antidote to over-relying on hot/cold equity simulations. Not sure what Av9114's point is, but I think many players either under or overvalue calling raises with speculative hands, and knowing exactly where you will be on the flop can be very eye opening. Obviously, stack sizes, opponents tendencies, position, etc, are all important to factor in, but if you think you are going to flop strong with 67s 1/3 of the time or only 1/10 of the time, you are so wrong that everything else doesn't matter.

One feature request: the histograms draw screen would be even better if it told you how often you flop draw combinations, i.e. open ended + flush draw, fd + gutshot, etc.

Thanks for feedback guys esp. on Deal-To-Flop and speed. Jacksin, super that you like the app, the app is honored to be one of your phone's firsts : ).

The next two updates are set now:

- V.2.3 - Suits in hand ranges, so you can enter e.g. Ahxh instead of just Axs, say if the flop has 2 hearts. You'll be able to edit the suits of any of the 169 cells like you can in PokerStove. (Will go live in about 3 weeks)

- V.2.4
- Move Equity stat to the top (instead of Win%) [Av9114].
- Draw combination stats in Deal-To-Flop [DesertCat].
- ... and more UI/stat type stuff. I'll be going through all the emails and threads to collect.

I'm not going to get into why I think the current deal-to feature is less useful than others seem to think as this isn't a strategy board. With regard to the speed and need to calculate extra stats, the easiest way to do it would be to create a table with all the values pre-computed and use a faster equity calculator(54s-JTs all flop draws and hands of various types with equal frequency, any two suited cards will flop a flush draw with the same frequency, any two unpaired cards flop a pair, two-pair, trips, etc with the same frequency). You would then have to make sure you account for the card removal effect from the other players hands. The reason I suggested the equity histogram vs the current one is because the combo draws/draw+hand are very important, but there are too many combinations to list nicely. A equity histogram would therefore be more elegant.

I should say that I bought this mainly for two reasons, first that I had considered making something similar in the past and wanted to see how well I thought you executed, and second I have a fair amount of itunes credits that I got as gifts that I have no real use for. Any real functionality was sort of gravy.

So aside from the things that I've already mentioned, there are a number of reasons that I won't likely use it much some which could be fixed and some that cannot (aka personal preference or behavioral tendencies). One of the more common reasons for me to use an equity calculator is to settle bets, for example two hands come up and someone says that its X% vs Y%. In this case even though its unlikely that the guesses will be so close that exact equity is needed, being able to say that it is exact removes the chance for debate.
With regard to the range functionality, I think the interface is too hard to use and would therefore be more likely to just remember the situation or make a note and do it when I get back to my computer. I don't play a lot of live poker, but even when I do I'm almost never going to have a desire to run a calculation like that. It's not really the portability that interests me at this point, its more about whether or not it provides new useful feature or not.
The inability to weight hand combinations and having to use the D-pad to select each hand individually is a pretty big negative for me. Maybe I'm too used to the pokerstove interface, but I like typing the hands in with the keyboard. It seems like less keystrokes(touches) to enter the info it also seems like it allows for more options. Sometimes it's easier to type a range in and sometimes its better to use the GUI. For example ATs+ is easier to type than to add the 5 distinct hands in the GUI. I'd also like to be able to simply do 78s vs AJo. The way its set up I have to either pick suits for the hands or navigate the 13x13 grid to pick the hands I want.

Anyway I'm not really complaining, I think you did a reasonably good job, just giving you my opinion because you seem to want to make this better.

I'm not going to get into why I think the current deal-to feature is less useful than others seem to think as this isn't a strategy board. With regard to the speed and need to calculate extra stats, the easiest way to do it would be to create a table with all the values pre-computed and use a faster equity calculator(54s-JTs all flop draws and hands of various types with equal frequency, any two suited cards will flop a flush draw with the same frequency, any two unpaired cards flop a pair, two-pair, trips, etc with the same frequency). You would then have to make sure you account for the card removal effect from the other players hands. The reason I suggested the equity histogram vs the current one is because the combo draws/draw+hand are very important, but there are too many combinations to list nicely. A equity histogram would therefore be more elegant.

...

(Disclosure: I'm the developer of PokerCruncher.)

Hello Av9114, first I want to say thanks, I think it's great that you're writing with your ideas and feelings about the app. That's how any app is going to improve, it takes customer feedback. I do have some counter-points ...

Re. "... this isn't a strategy board ..." -
I think if you're going to say that Deal-To-xxx and the additional stats aren't useful or even harmful then you're going to have to get into strategy and explain why. When I've explained this feature I've related it to strategy (comparing the odds of hitting the flop hard to stack sizes, position, player tendencies, etc.). Same for example in the recent post by DesertCat - "over-relying on hot/cold equity, stack sizes, opponents tendencies, position, etc". My reason for implementing this feature was to go beyond just win/loss/equity at river stats that other odds calculators show and to get into analyzing your preflop and flop strategies/decisions. To me this entire forum, and PokerCruncher, is all about digging into your strategy more.

Re. "... create a table with all the values pre-computed ... card removal effect ..." -
I think the creating the table part is fine but you'll run into difficulties in the card removal effect part. This takes logic on top of the tables (and you'll need separate tables for the wheel and broadway hands), and this logic has to handle specific cards not only for 1 other player but for all 9 other players. But the real difficulty is that you also have to handle the cases where players have hand ranges. E.g. if I have AhKh and I want to know my odds of flopping a flush or a straight or a gutshot, and if a player has the range {AnyBroadway, AA-22}, then the logic to take this range into account for my flop odds doesn't look trivial to me, because you have to handle a general hand range. I think there are way to many combinations for ranges for a table approach to work so you need code logic. And to handle general hand ranges for up to 9 other players, that looks even harder. So the algorithm would be way more complicated than the current algorithm imho.

I.m.o. the goodness of an algorithm isn't just about the speed, it's also about how confident you can be that it's right for all cases, what's its testability, what's its maintainability and extensibility e.g. how easy would it be to add additional stats like the combination draws that DesertCat suggested (and that will be in V2.4), and how confident are you that you can get further changes right.

That's one of the beauties of the MonteCarlo approach - it doesn't care about the exact solution and can solve just about any general problem easily - without tons of complicated code. The tradeoff is speed and results that are +/- 0.2% or 0.3%. As jacksin said if that kind of accuracy really matters to you then you have a pretty fine-tuned game ; ). The side-bets reason, I understand, but, when I've made side bets on odds at the tables I've usually added "if it's a +/- 0.5% thing then let's just call it a draw", true story . I personally think this small error is way-outweighed by other factors like your ability to accurately estimate your opponent's range of hands for starters.

Sorry for writing a ton again but I can't resist as I think this is interesting stuff. Hopefully we can all keep the constructive back and forth discussions going. You can be sure that your (and everyone's) feedback will improve the app e.g. your "move Equity to the top" is on the list and is a no-brainer improvement. Thanks!, -RJ

I'm not going to get into why I think the current deal-to feature is less useful than others seem to think as this isn't a strategy board.

Then why bring up this criticism? This is a strategy site, where others freely share their thoughts so you can improve your game. Don't welsh on us in this regard.

Quote:

With regard to the speed and need to calculate extra stats, the easiest way to do it would be to create a table with all the values pre-computed and use a faster equity calculator(54s-JTs all flop draws and hands of various types with equal frequency, any two suited cards will flop a flush draw with the same frequency, any two unpaired cards flop a pair, two-pair, trips, etc with the same frequency). You would then have to make sure you account for the card removal effect from the other players hands.

By all means hardcode features in this incrediably versatile program to save a few seconds on calculation time. I think the author's time is better spent adding more functionality than to try to do calculations in less than 15 seconds, which is plenty quick.

Quote:

I should say that I bought this mainly for two reasons, first that I had considered making something similar in the past and wanted to see how well I thought you executed, and second I have a fair amount of itunes credits that I got as gifts that I have no real use for. Any real functionality was sort of gravy.

So aside from the things that I've already mentioned, there are a number of reasons that I won't likely use it much some which could be fixed and some that cannot (aka personal preference or behavioral tendencies). One of the more common reasons for me to use an equity calculator is to settle bets, for example two hands come up and someone says that its X% vs Y%. In this case even though its unlikely that the guesses will be so close that exact equity is needed, being able to say that it is exact removes the chance for debate.
With regard to the range functionality, I think the interface is too hard to use and would therefore be more likely to just remember the situation or make a note and do it when I get back to my computer. I don't play a lot of live poker, but even when I do I'm almost never going to have a desire to run a calculation like that. It's not really the portability that interests me at this point, its more about whether or not it provides new useful feature or not.
The inability to weight hand combinations and having to use the D-pad to select each hand individually is a pretty big negative for me. Maybe I'm too used to the pokerstove interface, but I like typing the hands in with the keyboard. It seems like less keystrokes(touches) to enter the info it also seems like it allows for more options. Sometimes it's easier to type a range in and sometimes its better to use the GUI. For example ATs+ is easier to type than to add the 5 distinct hands in the GUI. I'd also like to be able to simply do 78s vs AJo. The way its set up I have to either pick suits for the hands or navigate the 13x13 grid to pick the hands I want.

Anyway I'm not really complaining, I think you did a reasonably good job, just giving you my opinion because you seem to want to make this better.

You are complaining and most of your complaints are silly. Pokerstove itself can't weight hand ranges. And the author has to work within the limitations of the device interface, and in my opinion he's done a heck of a job making it easy to create hand ranges. Not only does it have some features that PokerStove lacks, there is nothing as good as it on any handheld device.

But your silliness reaches a peak when you claim you can write something better, but don't need anything as sophisticated a handheld, because you don't play live, and then you criticize it for not meeting some arbitrary standards that no software pc, or handheld, currently meets.

I think most live players can benefit from this application. Not to do hand range analysis during a hand, but to do it after a hand when you take a walk wondering, did I make the right decision? And even if I'm in front of my pc, I'll use PokerCruncher before I'll use PokerStove. A tiny bit of greater accuracy isn't worth giving up a bigger, better, feature set.

Many thanks to DesertCat, 99k, and the rest of you that have given your thoughts on PokerCruncher. It's great to hear positive feedback and your ideas on the app and it makes me want to keep improving it. Also thanks to Av9114 for writing; I think it takes both positive and critical constructive feedback to make things happen and improve.

V.2.3 just went live. You can now select suits in hand ranges (like in PokerStove). E.g. you can enter the hand range Ahxh (h=heart) instead of just Axs (s=suited) e.g. if the flop has exactly two hearts and you want to put a player on the (heart) nut flush draw. I've attached a picture below of the new suit combinations selector view.

* Single-select vs. multi-select mode of the suit combinations view.
* New "Select" button for multi-selecting cells in 3 directions.
* New "View Hand Range Text" Menu button.
* New built-in hand ranges Jx, Tx (not a big deal but had room for these; should have had them from the start).

If you see ways of improving the suits feature/UI I'm open to suggestions for future updates. The next update V.2.4 is about a month away (as of now it will be mainly a stats/UI update).

Thanks guys, -RJ

Select Suits In Hand Ranges
(Example: Ahxh (h=heart), and Ax-offsuit where the Ace is Ah):

Dude!
No reviews yet, since it's synchronising right now. But looks awesome!

Ok, so I started fiddling around a bit with the 3 apps. My findings:

PokerCruncher
Looks like a solid PokerStove like app. Basic preflop calculation (2 players) takes about 15 seconds, but that's to be expected with the iPhone's CPU. Most expensive app of the 3, but definitely worth it in my opinion.

+ Stoving functionality on iPhone+ Visual display of ranges on iPhone- Calculation time (however after a few seconds it's results won't differ that much)

Suggestion: Ability to tap on the Cards chart in Hand Range view. The cardcombo "icons" are to small to tap them accurately, but it beats pressing left 8x and after that up 10x. I'd rather tap to get the selection to approximately what I want to select and use the arrows after to pinpoint the exact holding.

Poker Odds Teacher
Explains how to calculate odds in some common situations. In my opinion the common sitiuations are to few (4 situations preflop and 7 situations postflop). For a paid App I would expect more common situations. This is more like a lite version of a paid app that features way more situations. However I guess thats what OddsQuizzer is all about.

In step 3 of the ??? I understand compensation for re-improvement. I however find the equation 60% - (16% * 60%) (with AKo vs 22) a bit mystifying. I understand about the compensation for the 2 deuces left in the deck making a set, but why that would be (16% * 60%)... No clue.

+ Teaches odds calculation- Not enough added value for a stand alone app in my opinion. Poker Odds Teacher and OddsQuizzer would make a great combination as a single app though.

Odds Quizzer
Awesome tool to train your equity awareness in common situations. I was looking for something like this for a while now and it's even better it appeared on the iPhone (In bed, while waiting for whatever)! Basically it's the same as "Poker Odds Teacher" (POT from now on), but without the Step-By-Step Tutorial which illustrates how the equity is calculated.
Although OQ offers more situations as POT does, it still doesn't offer enough situations for my likings. The quizzes are categorized in 3 categories, Preflop (Basic and Advanced - 20 quizzes), Post-Flop (Basic and Advanced - 20 quizzes) and Hand Ranges (Preflop and Postflop - 20 quizzes).

+ Awesome way to increasy equity awareness- Except for my suggestions on the bottom, none really

Suggestions:
-Although I think most common situations are covered, I would like to see more quizzes. Instead of only KK vs AQ also a QQ vs AJ (and maybe a few more in this category). Results won't differ that much, but I tend to memorize the equity with the visual image of the KK and the AQ instead of the situations (pocketpair vs 1 overcard). Technically this would be really easy I guess.
- I would like to see the ability to take quizzes from each category in random order (take the Preflop-Basic quizzes only in random order). I tend to remember the outcomes of the quizzes by knowing that after the outcome 74%, the next outcome will be 60% (for example) without seeing the quizz yet.

All and all: Great work rj999! Thanks for bringing this to the iPhone!

Thanks for buying all 3 apps and for your detailed reviews and suggestions. I will be implementing some (maybe not all) of your suggestions in future updates.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cusem

Suggestion: Ability to tap on the Cards chart in Hand Range view. The cardcombo "icons" are to small to tap them accurately, but it beats pressing left 8x and after that up 10x. I'd rather tap to get the selection to approximately what I want to select and use the arrows after to pinpoint the exact holding.

Good idea!, I will consider this in V.2.4.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cusem

Poker Odds Teacher
Explains how to calculate odds in some common situations. In my opinion the common sitiuations are to few (4 situations preflop and 7 situations postflop). For a paid App I would expect more common situations. This is more like a lite version of a paid app that features way more situations. However I guess thats what OddsQuizzer is all about.

In step 3 of the ??? I understand compensation for re-improvement. I however find the equation 60% - (16% * 60%) (with AKo vs 22) a bit mystifying. I understand about the compensation for the 2 deuces left in the deck making a set, but why that would be (16% * 60%)... No clue.

+ Teaches odds calculation- Not enough added value for a stand alone app in my opinion. Poker Odds Teacher and OddsQuizzer would make a great combination as a single app though.

I will consider adding more scenarios in future versions. My thinking was OddsTeacher would have fewer scenarios than OddsQuizzer, because OddsTeacher's goal is to teach a general method you can execute in your head to estimate odds. Then you can use the method on OddsQuizzer's wider set of scenarios. But yeah, the bar for even 99cent apps is high, and OddsTeacher can use more scenarios.

Re. the 60% - (16% * 60%) pre-flop calculation: AKo improves 60% of the time (your estimate in Step 1). But 16% of these times (60%), 22 re-improves on AKo (your estimate in Step 2). "of" means multiplication, so we subtract off (16% * 60%) from 60% to arrive at our final estimate for AKo's equity. I will re-word the Step 3 screen to make this clearer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cusem

Odds Quizzer
Awesome tool to train your equity awareness in common situations. I was looking for something like this for a while now and it's even better it appeared on the iPhone (In bed, while waiting for whatever)! Basically it's the same as "Poker Odds Teacher" (POT from now on), but without the Step-By-Step Tutorial which illustrates how the equity is calculated.
Although OQ offers more situations as POT does, it still doesn't offer enough situations for my likings. The quizzes are categorized in 3 categories, Preflop (Basic and Advanced - 20 quizzes), Post-Flop (Basic and Advanced - 20 quizzes) and Hand Ranges (Preflop and Postflop - 20 quizzes).

+ Awesome way to increasy equity awareness- Except for my suggestions on the bottom, none really

Suggestions:
-Although I think most common situations are covered, I would like to see more quizzes. Instead of only KK vs AQ also a QQ vs AJ (and maybe a few more in this category). Results won't differ that much, but I tend to memorize the equity with the visual image of the KK and the AQ instead of the situations (pocketpair vs 1 overcard). Technically this would be really easy I guess.
- I would like to see the ability to take quizzes from each category in random order (take the Preflop-Basic quizzes only in random order). I tend to remember the outcomes of the quizzes by knowing that after the outcome 74%, the next outcome will be 60% (for example) without seeing the quizz yet.

All and all: Great work rj999! Thanks for bringing this to the iPhone!

Thanks for the ideas, I will see what more quizzes/questions I can add. My thinking on both the Teacher and Quizzer apps was to keep the set of scenarios/questions lean but have good coverage of the important situations without unnecessary repetition of similar situations. E.g. if Teacher/Quizzer have a scenario "pocket pair vs. lower pocket pair preflop" then AA vs. KK should suffice, because the same outs and counter-outs (and odds) apply for KK vs. QQ/JJ/etc., 99 vs. 55, etc. (well, almost the same odds not exactly the same due to straight outs, counterfeiting, etc.). But at least several customers have suggested having more scenarios/questions so I will investigate what I can add.

Re. random order - good idea!, I will do this.

Thanks for looking at all 3 apps closely and for your suggestions. You can be sure that your feedback will improve the apps. Thank you, -RJ

I just bought the OddsQuizzer app. Definitely a +EV way to pass some time when waiting around or stuck in a boring meeting. Anyway, one suggestion I'd have is to express the answers in both ratios and percentages (currently it just shows %s for those that don't have the app). It'd also be cool if you added a chart to show All-In Preflop matchups, somthing like this:

Anyway, one suggestion I'd have is to express the answers in both ratios and percentages (currently it just shows %s for those that don't have the app).
Thanks

+1

I'm still using your app (oddsquizzer mostly) several times a day (it made taking a dump way more +EV).

And plz:
- Random quizzes within a specific group. I'm really memorizing that 81% comes after 47%.
- At least 2 situations for the same scenario. I'm remembering the equity percentage by recognizing the cards from the scenario, not by recognizing the scenario.

Thanks 99k! Just started work on V.2.4 (combination draws stats, etc.), will go live in a few weeks. I'm getting many good suggestions on this thread and via email so the update pipeline is definitely filled. Thanks, -RJ

Actually I was wondering exactly this. Do these iPhone apps work on the iPod touch and can I also upload my mp3's into the iPod touch or am I still forced to buy DRM songs from iTunes?

I use Cruncher and OddsQuizzer on the ipod Touch with no problems. There shouldn't be any difference between it and the IPhone for most, if not all apps. The only difference is that iTouch apps that require internet access won't work unless you are in a WiFi zone.

I may have an idea what to spend my points on now (I ebayed my first one)

I am pretty sure you can just load your mp3's into the ITune's application and it will upload/play them the same as the protected songs they sell on the ITunes store. I've got a bunch of songs from my CD's and I'm pretty sure they are MP3 format.